


Endurance of the Soul

by wordsmithraven



Series: Samwena Week April 2020 [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Assisted Suicide, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s15e03 The Rupture, F/M, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Season/Series 15 Spoilers, Spoilers, Witch Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23573251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsmithraven/pseuds/wordsmithraven
Summary: The moments leading up to Rowena’s decision to jump into Hell.Samwena Fan Week 2020 - Day 4: Courage or Soul
Relationships: Rowena MacLeod & Sam Winchester, Rowena MacLeod/Sam Winchester
Series: Samwena Week April 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1693411
Kudos: 14
Collections: Samwena Week





	Endurance of the Soul

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for writing this.

When Rowena MacLeod had answered Samuel’s call the day before, she’d had no idea she was going to die.

Now she sat on stone steps, cold and a little hungry, knowing in her bones that she was never going to see another day. She wiped forcefully across her cheek to get rid of a tear. Her hands were shaking a little on the dried skin that formed the pages of the _Book of the Damned_. She cast a furtive glance around the tomb in which they’d sheltered. Castiel and the demon, Belphagor, had already gone while the boys were talking softly by a wall. Neither of them had seen her uncharacteristic lapse.

It would’ve been inaccurate to say that the prior day had been a _normal_ one. They were in the midst of an Apocalypse jump-started by God, after all. But for Rowena, it had become somewhat routine in her recent years. She’d been alive for 413 of them and in all that time, she’d not experienced the kind of catastrophic...astronomical events that she’d had in the last 5 alone. As it happened, some part of her thought that was fine. Rowena had always felt that it was better to go out on a high note than a low one, so in one way, she was glad it was happening then. She would have loathed dying during some of her worst years.

If she were honest, she’d had a few inklings leading up to her current situation. The barest scent of destiny had perfumed the air when she’d been called in the day before by the Winchesters to assist them in closing the gaping wide hell-gate in Harlan, Kansas. She’d arrived at the high-school turned quarantine hall with her standard Winchester Disaster bag full of potent magical ingredients and obscure grimoires. She always had it prepped in case the boys called her in for just such an occasion. 

The day had passed in a frenzy of violence, spirits, and no sleep. Her idea of a good Friday night on most occasions if only she weren’t to die at the end of it. By the next morning, she most definitely wasn’t having a good time. She’d been awake for over 26 hours. Every spell, every incantation she’d tried had failed. The spirit repository crystal had been stolen by Jack, Ketch was dead, and she’d been blasted back into her body by a wall of angry ghosts. All had seemed lost.

It was mid-morning now and she knew. She _knew_ . So when the signs had begun to reveal themselves, she’d recognized them immediately. She’d been frantically searching the _Book of the Damned_ for a spell that could help. Then it happened. She turned a page, saw a spell, and knowledge struck through her like a bolt of lightning. She knew what she had to do; what she was going to do.

Of course, she’d had some foreknowledge of the event. Death herself had given her a sneak preview nearly two years before. It wasn’t exactly the perfect preparation, though. Prophecies were always vague in that way and hers was no different. She didn’t know how or why or when, only who. Sam Winchester. Samuel was going to kill her no matter what she did or who she saved. It was written into the very fabric of time. 

Still, perfect or not, it was more than what most people got. Rowena counted herself lucky in that. She’d thought it had given her time to prepare. Time to really wrap her head around the idea of truly and utterly dying. But the fated moment was here and she was still scared.

That was her only excuse for what she did after that. Rowena sat numb on the stairs leading to the entrance of the mausoleum. _It couldn’t be happening_ , she thought. _It shouldn’t be._ Just like that, her life over? Not possible. Perhaps she’d misunderstood what she’d seen. Her eyes were still locked on the open spell-book, the offending spell etched in red. Blood, if she wasn’t mistaken.

“Hey,” Samuel interrupted, drawing her eye from the book in her lap. “Anything useful in there.”

He nodded down to the Book and she carefully closed it before he could see.

“Not a thing,” she said lightly, hoping he wouldn’t catch the lie on her tongue. When he turned away, her fingers gripped the book so tightly that they turned white.

Dean stormed past them and out into the graveyard, muttering something about checking on the demon. It was all white noise to Rowena as she was focused entirely on what she would need to do to avoid what she knew to be happening.

Every spell and enchantment raced through her brain. She knew she’d despaired that there was nothing anyone could do earlier but there had to be one that she’d forgotten. One that could work. The _lekhavul_ might be useful although it was designed for water, not the gates of Hell. Perhaps the _plier en trois_ , then would be better? Not exactly the strongest of spells but it could possibly be strengthened. Of course, that still left the matter of the freed souls. If they bound the gate but left the human and demon souls free, it would be all for naught.

She startled when Samuel sat down next to her, moving her back out of the way.

“Sorry,” he said, steadying her with his hand in apology. “Didn’t mean to break your concentration.”

She smiled automatically at his words and waved the apology away with a swipe of the hand. 

He hummed and nodded. His hair was falling into his eyes and he brushed it back before looking down in that way he always did when he was gearing up for some explosion of emotion and sentiment. Rowena braced herself and waited.

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he finally said. “Sorry for pressing you so hard when you were upset.”

She thought spitefully of telling him everything. Of watching that big, beautiful face crumple up in sadness. It would serve him right, coming into her life and twisting them up tighter and tighter with every passing day until they sat tangled in the Gordian Knot of the present. He had done this to her. He’d put the idea into her head. Made her want to do good, help people...save lives. If she’d still been evil, perhaps this wouldn’t be happening at all. He had given her the chance at a life worth living and then turned into the agent of its destruction. It wasn’t fair.

_‘Sometimes life is unfair...and sometimes we lose things. And sometimes we make mistakes…and some of these things can never be fixed, no matter how powerful you become.’_

Death’s voice broke through Rowena’s surge of resentment. Billie was right, of course. There was nothing Rowena could do. She was going to die and it wasn’t dear Samuel’s fault even if he were holding the knife. It wasn’t her fault, either. Being good, being evil wouldn’t have changed anything except perhaps the way it happened. It was pure destiny. A destiny unlike any other.

The perfect relevance of a conversation two years before to her situation right then was bordering on absurd. Then again, Billie had probably seen this moment etched into her black notebook. It figured. Cosmic entities loved that kind of circular wordplay. 

“You were only trying to help,” he continued, unaware of her chaotic thoughts. “It’s not your fault the world is ending. It’s ours. Mine. It’s not your responsibility to fix everything we break. We shouldn’t have put you in this position.”

Rowena felt a little ashamed about her contemplated cruelty. It also wasn’t fair to be angry at Samuel when he was just as trapped as she was. He didn’t even know what was happening. She’d thought she had purged those kinds of vindictive instincts but it seemed there was still some left over. No time to fix it now. She would just have to die with it.

“All is forgiven, Samuel,” she said instead of revealing her coming demise. “It was getting me nowhere.”

It had become second nature to absolve the man of almost anything. So much had happened between them. With the hour of her death poised before them, it felt gauche to hold such a trivial thing against him. 

Samuel’s gaze was trapped in the middle distance, his attention not on her as he was too busy self-flagellating in his mind.

She grabbed his hand in one of hers and used her other to turn his face toward her. His fingers gave an involuntary squeeze.

“Just like this guilt you’re feeling is getting you nowhere,” she said firmly. “The only one to blame here is Chuck, whose bitterness and insecurity led him to murder your son in front of you and decide to doom the world.”

Samuel had told her about young Jack’s death. About God burning him from the inside out and how Samuel had responded by shooting him with the quantum link gun. Having experienced being burned alive, it was horrifying to think of a child going through anything similar. It was a savage wound. One she had some experience with. There had been Fergus first. She had learned of his first death years after it had happened. They’d been separated for many years when it had happened. She’d denied him everything: her love, her time, her very presence. Then she had denied herself feeling for him. As a result, she’d weathered his first death with a stone heart. 

Then came Oskar, her sweet boy. She’d poured everything she’d wanted to give to Fergus into Oskar and paid the price by being forced to kill him while Fergus watched. Around and around they’d gone, exacting revenge on each other until suddenly even Fergus was stolen from her, taken to the Empty. She and Fergus had not had a loving relationship, to be sure, but he’d been her blood. She hadn’t realized how much she would miss him until he was well and truly out of her reach.

“Take it from someone who has lost a child...twice,” she said, tears threatening to fall from her eyes. “You were completely and utterly in the right to shoot God. None of this is your fault, Samuel.”

Samuel smiled his usual melancholy smile and the corners of his red shot eyes wrinkled. Whether they were red from lack of sleep or from crying over his son, Rowena didn’t know. It easily could have been either, or both. She certainly felt just as exhausted.

Rowena impulsively drew her hand down his cheek, running her thumb under his eye to catch a single tear before it fell. She fought the urge to kiss it away or perhaps just kiss him. It would’ve been wildly inappropriate and Samuel would’ve been completely flummoxed. Rowena almost laughed. Mere hours at the most until she died and there she was comforting the man who would end her life. Wanting to _kiss_ him, even...She had well and truly domesticated herself.

Before she could do anything embarrassing, the door to the mausoleum opened and the others returned. She separated from Samuel immediately, rubbing her hands on her silk dress in chagrin. Samuel furrowed his brow and gave an unsure smile before standing and walking away.

The demon, Belphegor, had a plan to call the escaped souls and demons back into Hell using an infernal weapon of power. As he spoke, a spell came to her mind, the _Sanetur Acre Vulnus_ would do nicely. Enhanced, of course, to a massive scale with both her and Samuel’s power combined. She made sure to conscript him into joining her ritual in preparation. Once the souls had returned, they would snap the tear shut, trapping them back in their own dimension. The plan could have worked too, if Fate had been on their side. 

It fell apart so quickly after that.

At the start of the new plan, Rowena had felt a frisson of excitement as they spoke the words of the _Sanetur Acre Vulnus._ It was working. She could feel it. The souls were rushing back into Hell, the rupture was starting to close. Samuel’s diction wasn’t exactly perfect, he spoke slowly and carefully, but the sheer potency he brought to the spell made up for whatever confidence he lacked in his own magic. Rowena smiled as they finished the chant, fondly hoping she would get to see him come into his power. It would’ve been her honor to pass her full knowledge onto him, mold him into a pupil of her own design. They had finished in unison and the world stopped shaking around them.

“Did it work?” Samuel asked. He was looking around the crypt in confusion. “Rowena?”

She raised her eyes to his, their hands still gripped together, and everything fell into place. She pressed her lips together in resignation and said nothing.

Samuel let go of her and stepped away to speak with his brother on the phone. She used his distraction to kneel down and pull a sharp knife from her bag. She pulled in a bracing breath then jabbed the knife into her shoulder, spilling blood down the front of her pink dress and letting out a pained cry. She jabbed her fingers in her own wound and didn’t let up until she felt the small bundle of magic which she pulled from her flesh. The Resurrection Seal.

Her cry turned Samuel to her, his call with his brother forgotten. “Rowena? What are you doing?”

She kept her explanation technical. It was the only way she could work up the nerve to go through with it. He protested, of course, being the sweet lad that he was. But she did not let him deter her. She didn’t fully understand her feelings for the giant hunter but she understood magic and destiny and the workings of their universe. She believed in him and she believed in herself, and every atom in her body was screaming that it was right. She told him as much and even still he refused to obey her. By the end, they were both crying, both holding the knife together, the tip pressed to her stomach.

Samuel protested and tried to yank the knife away from her, “There has to be another way.” His voice sounded angry and hurt.

“I wish there were,” she replied, somber. “I do. I don't care about anything enough to take my own life. Not you, your brother... not even the world. But I believe in prophecy. I believe in _magic_. And I'm here, and you're here, and everything we need to end this right is in our hands.”

She was desperate to make him see reason. The world was ending, they had only minutes before it would be too late.

“I know this in my bones,” she said, pulling the dagger back in place. “It has to be this way. Do it! Kill me, Samuel!”

Samuel's will was disintegrating rapidly. She could tell. He was breathing so hard that Rowena feared he might pass out. All he needed was one, final push.

She laid her free hand softly on his shoulder and spoke, gazing deep within his hazel eyes. “I know we've gotten quite fond of each other, haven't we? But will you let the world die, let your brother die, just so I can live?”

The pain he felt was raw on his face. His eyes shot all over her face in doubt and she felt the tension he was using to pull back the knife went slack. She nodded in encouragement, at peace with what had to be done.

He looked imploringly at her one last time then crumpled in defeat. “No,” he reluctantly admitted and pressed forward to hug her and kill her all at the same time. 

Rowena felt the sharp edge of the knife slice through her womb, sudden and cold. It was a pain akin to when she’d given birth to wee Fergus all those centuries before. She clutched hard at Samuel’s shoulder, allowing herself one last embrace before it was done. 

She stepped back and grabbed his chin as firmly as she’d done before, hoping he would understand again that even this was not his fault.

“That's my boy,” she said, not letting him avoid her eyes.

She stepped back and turned the knife within her, stretching the wound wide. It was agonizing. One of the worst pains she’d ever felt outside of her immolation. She pulled the knife from her body and began to speak the words for _Death Is an Infinite Vessel_.

Samuel, still crying, followed her out of the crypt all the way to the edge of the tear in the ground. Souls and demons were rushing by them, hastening into her. She could feel them fill her up. Billions of spiritual nuclear reactors stuffed into her form. The power that they brought her was unfathomable. She'd spent her entire life in dogged pursuit of exactly this kind of power, rampaging and betraying anything and anyone to obtain it, including her own son. The irony that she would finally attain at the cusp of her greatest self-sacrifice, was not lost on her.

This was the moment, her last moment on the Earth. She turned to look back at her family, two hunters and a fallen angel. People she never in her wildest dreams could’ve predicted she’d find and love. She looked them each in the eye, stopping lastly on Samuel. _Her_ Samuel.

“Goodbye, boys,” she said and turned away, not wanting to waste another moment. She had the world to save.

She peered down into the yawning maw of Hell and then leapt into the abyss.


End file.
